How Healthy Is This Juice? Depends If You Speak English Or Spanish

By consumeristcareyJuly 12, 2009

Orchida Coconut Juice displays nutrition data in both English and Spanish, but the values aren’t the same. The English nutrition panels claims that the juice has 240 calories and no fat. Apparently, our Spanish-speaking friends are supposed to read that as 150 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. Pictures of the strange panels, inside…

@Don’t take anything aaron8301 says seriously: wow, that came out as me sounding like saying look at the left and me being a dick, i meant on the photo on the right, you can see towards the left of that one itself.. yeah still hard to explain :)

What concerns me is the Total Fat value. Something with less calories has 2.5 g of total fat (yet, only 2 g of Saturated Fat and 0g of Trans Fat) but the container with no fat at all, has 240 calories. I realize that the Spanish label might account for the missing .5g in a rounding error, but still, why does the other label show such different numbers?

@Coles_Law: I agree. My guess is that the English label is simply for another product. If it was just a massive typo it would be quite a coincidence for the math to add up… in other words, for the quantity of macronutrients to accurately match the number of calories.

@MonstrousCosmos: If it’s the nutritional information for another product, all the macronutrients would presumably still be correct for that number of calories. That’s assuming they didn’t make two mistakes, though, which may be too much credit to give them.

It’s actually rather surprising to consider that the nutritional information on food is subject to typographical mistakes and/or misplacement like this. The difference between the two labels for several categories is certainly not trivial. I wonder how much harm this could cause to someone who needs to closely monitor their dietary intakes.

@formatc: for me, as a diabetic, the difference in listed carbs would be 116 points on my blood sugar. [each person’s sensitivity to carbs/insulin is different]
so yeah, kind of the difference between me seeing well enough to drive and feeling ok, and feeling nauseated, dizzy and almost like i’m drunk.
the inconsistencies on food labeling like this are just one of the reasons i test my blood sugar every hour or two.

@formatc: Doesn’t surprise me at all. The graphic designer probably has a template for all of this companies various beverages with that branding, and forgot to change out the english/sent the wrong save file to print/etc. It’s a fairly easy mistake to make if you’re not careful.

@I Love New Jersey: No, because it both states the serving size, and the amount of servings, as 1 can, just like in english. If the serving size in ml was different than the amount of servings, then the amount of servings wouldn’t be 1 can.

Perhaps they got the translated labels mixed up, and one label is for a different drink? And as far as being concerned about meat in coconut juice, I believe they are referring to the fleshy part of the coconut.

I wouldn’t drink it. It’s from China, imported by CTC Foods International Inc Dba Oriental Trading Co. I don’t even drink apple juice with concentrate from China. I don’t trust their quality control and they’ve just been caught with bogus labels.

The Spanish label is pretty screwy, the translations are weird, and the English one is off too.

Anyway, I asked the internet and it told me a few things.

1) The distributor is indeed “CTC Food International” (as somewhat visible on the side of the can). But, going under Oriental Trading Company, it may or may not have anything to do with legendary cheap-crap-selling outfit Oriental Trading.

2) The nutritional information on the Spanish label is likely correct, at least as far as the manufacturer is concerned, if not science. The CTC (er, sorry, “asianfoodgrocer.com”) product info (in English) is here.

3) The juice is actually a product of Japan and is actually called “Orchids” not “Orchida.”

That label is Inexcusable. A few years ago I designed US & Canadian labels for a very well know clothing company. Since I do not speak French, I thank God for the company’s legal department for correcting any errors.

Someone went through a lot of trouble with those labels, if you take the calories per gram from the bottom of the english label and do a little math with the values given on both the english and spanish labels, both add up correctly…

Same thing happened with a mail in rebate offer I once saw… $30 in the English version and $50 in the Spanish version. I quickly turned mine in for the Spanish version… a check for $50.00 is still written in English in America.

Some of the discrepancy may stem from the fact that the US has some different legal definitions than the rest of the world for product labeling. US manufacturers have lobbied to be able to fudge certain ingredients so their products will fall within the “fat free” and “low fat” guidelines. If anything, it’s the US label you shouldn’t trust. US firms are lobbying to water down other legal definitions, such as the “organic” definition. They are trying to fake out the buyers so people won’t stop buying their products. However, I do agree with the comment above which points out that Chinese manufacturers adulterate their products with sub-par and even dangerous fillers and substitutions to make more money on the products. I don’t even buy Hershey products anymore because they moved their factories to China. The reason manufacturing is cheaper overseas is because those backwater nations have no laws protecting workers, the environment, or product safety. If you want first-world standards for your food and goods, you have to buy from first-world manufacturers. And that especially goes for food safety.